Faithful April and a Bit of Kindness!

Here we are, April done and over with, whatever is the world coming to! Thank you for all of your lovely and snarky comments on my last post about my invisible squares!  I suppose I could have all manner of things completed if they were all invisible ahaha~ :b  Please feel free to join me in my Invisible Escapades and we shall take over the world with our imaginations!

First up!  If you haven't heard of Kim's 60 Random Acts of Kindness, it is her awesomely crazy way of celebrating life this year!  It's so fun to give during your birthday!  But! I can't believe I am RAK #2 and lookit the exclamation points the mail brought!

the goodies

A STONEY CREEK PATTERN!  Yes, I squeaked.  I really like Stoney Creek patterns.  She also sent some lovely fabric!  This is my first new fabric in eons!  And those little squares down on the bottom?

home is where you are ♥

Eeee!  They are so tiny and adorable!  Each block is ~1.5" square (I measured them at her suggestion haha) and they're stitched on perforated paper.  I've worked with perforated plastic but haven't been brave enough to trust myself (or cats) to paper!  Eeee! :D   They reside on my geeky shelf, not because they are geeky!  It's just my space for stuff I love. :)

Thank you so much, Kim!  :D :D :D

Now, since it's the end of April (egad, pt. 2), Faithful April, Justine's brainchild! It was so nice to work on just one thing again and I continued on with Final Fantasy III, letting it shoehorn its way into Gifted Gorgeousness along with invisible squares. Here's what happened!

before, start of April

after - with bonus parked string

Eee. I am so close to a finish. I hope the subject is more apparent to those who have not seen the final image.  I imagine the WIPs looked rather odd!  I feel like I'm in the area right before the final boss battle. I'm still free to roam around the map (chart), doing all the side quests and gathering all available ribbons (putting in backstitching and filling in the other leg of the cross).  But the boss is still there, waiting.  

I am going to continue with Faithful April right on into Faithful May and have. This. DONE(???). Two years, shameful! I've already started daydreaming about which one I'm doing next.  It will be the "easy" one haaaaaaaaaah.

Thank you for tuning into this week's edition of Ishkabibble Babble!  wriggles away

Gifted Gorgeousness, Faithful April #1, and Some TUSAL

Well, hidey ho~ Thank you for all the well wishes for finding more huck towels! I did manage to get two -- the only two they had. I don't know if more will trickle out from back stock but here is hoping! Three more to go so please share all your well wishes again haha. :D

click me!

Now on to the crafty things! I have joined in Justine's Faithful April, where we devote our time on one project. I have shoehorned it as "finish one project at a time" as I really wanted to join in but the local knitting guild decided this was the month to knit some squares for a baby afghan! These will also work for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness as they are not baby afghan squares for me (thank goodness not ready for that haha :b). They needed to be done this month and I got the boss-lady's approval since knitting doesn't count anyway LOL. :D

Here are my two squares!

Well, here is where my two squares WOULD be but I completely derped out and didn't take a picture before taking them in to the lady finishing the blanket!  We decided to make a sort of sampler afghan with different 8" x 8" squares in yellow and white as the baby gender is unknown. Some of the less adventurous knitters will make some stockinette/garter squares for the corners. My squares are a triangle (yellow) and tile (creamy white) stitches. I am well known in the group for being a tight knitter (if you knit please be amused/horrified that I cannot slide my stitches on aluminum! needles without great effort!) so I was asked to do the tile square after one of the ladies brought her completed one in and was unhappy(?) with it (I thought it looked fine). She had four repeats of the stitch to my six.

I am unsure about the yarn. It was my first foray into using a merino/acrylic blend. The white in particular seemed to be prone to slubs (I haaaaate slubs). Otherwise it's very, very soft and lovely to hold the finished product. It splits like crazy.  At $8/213yd skein, I am not sure how comfortable I am using for baby items though it does make for a lovely gift. I would not recommend it for a beginner yarn unless one is willing to not stab people with needles after all the splitting and slipping and slubs.

Technical Details

• Baby Afghan Squares, tile stitch (example pattern here), and triangle stitch (example pattern here)
• Yarn: Cascade Pacific, 02 white and 12 yellow
• #7 (4.5mm) needles
• Finished size blocked: 8" square (20ish cm square)
• Started: March 31, Finished: April 10, 11 hours.

before

Also for Faithful April and GG, more progress on Final Fantasy III, YAAAAAAAAAAY.  When I was originally planning to just work on this (pre-baby squares) I was thinking how to squeeze it in for GG as I wanted to remain faithful to that too!  So, how did I plan it?  Well, FFIII is the only project I have that is stitched on the floor stand -- gifted to me by my mom.  The needle minder (my very first!) solely for this project is the adorable Chii from Justine!  The fabric for this piece was found in a thrift store, "gifted" by some random stranger, how nice of them!  So, there you have it.  I am Faithfully Gifted Gorgeousness-ing.  tucks away shoehorn

still not curved

As you can see, not a huge amount of progress but the squares had to come first. Since they are faithfully finished, I can devote the rest of the month to this! It's nice not having to put away the stand after every session haha.  Also, I swear this is the hardest thing to take a picture of!  If I'd take it off the stand (not happening until it's finished), I imagine the images would be more consistent.

safety first

Here is something I saw shared on Stitching Lotus; how one organizes WIPS.  I absolutely adore these plastic folders.  They're large enough that patterns don't have to be folded and are clear so I know what the heck is going on in them.  I keep the DS case from FFIII in there too so when I run into a weird spot on the pattern I can refer to the original (though tiny) image and make adjustments if necessary.

click me, too!

April strings

And lastly, TUSAL! There's a healthy layer of black in there this time. I find that DMC 310 is somewhat of a pain to pick out if a mistake is made. It always seems to fray and break no matter how careful I am. I usually don't like Sullivan's floss but black is the one color I prefer, though 310 is much more readily available.

Mkay, I have rambled enough and didn't have enough pictures. Shame!  I'll continue working on FFIII for the remainder of the month, ignoring my other projects and a crochet pattern that presented itself in a completely untimely manner and DEMANDED to be made.  An army of them, really.  I was really excited when it was uploaded to ravelry, and just as excited when I saw Snowflower Diaries May freebie.  I admit I squeak delightedly at the computer at any given chance.

Have a good'n!

FotM! FFIII! Babbles!

Oh dear, oh dear!  It seems April is trying to slip past me.  Thanks for all the fun comments on the Easter Blog Hop post. :D  I even got some new followers (spastic waving), hi!  I kinda feel like I'm going every which way right now.  I can't believe I had to start mowing the grass in March.  The garden is worked up with onions, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, sweet peas, garlic, and one (of only four) cabbages planted.  The tomatoes are started in their little pods to be put outside when it warms up more, as well as the assortment of peppers, cucumbers, and squash.  I had to dig up some of my blackberry as it's trying to take over the world!  It felt good to work outside in the sunshine but boy-o-boy was I pooped after.  On to the stitching!

before

after

First up, I have a small bit of progress to show on the lovely Flower of the Month series, July's Larkspur/Delphinium.  I am very much enjoying working on this piece though I don't often sit down to work on it. The blues are magical and I finally found the remaining four after a trip to the Big City.  It's a bit like violets was but it must be the enjoyability (new word copyright Rosey175) of blue that doesn't make it so bothersome.  That or I am still in my "I'mma do what I want, when I want" mindset and not worrying about silly little things like Time.

I am in a bit of a panic though.  Hancock Fabrics has declared bankruptcy and is liquidating all of its stock.  While this means (the sad kind of) sales, it also means the end of being able to find these impossible ecru huck towels!  They're available online (for double the price) but I'd really rather avoid that route if at all possible.  I will need five more to finish this set.  I'm hoping to get to our local store and snag some before it shuts its doors forever.  Bah! :(

before

after

Next, delicious progress on FFIII (sorry for the derp after picture; it is not curved).  There's a full word over there, YAY.  Even a start on the III -- that's the black blip at the end.  And even MORE YAY is that the green point above the letter Y is exactly where it is supposed to be which almost made me cry with relief.  Something going right on this piece for a change weeeeee~

And lastly, Crafty Sasha is having a giveaway!  Do check out her blog; she does a neat assortment of projects.  ----  This is what one gets for spending days typing up a post!   Her giveaway is over now but go check out her blog anyway. :D

I think that's all for now.  No crocheting this time!  I do have a bit of knitting but it's Gift Knitting and will be next post.  I didn't work on the Singer 201-2 more since I (still) need to order the rewiring kits.  Maybe I'm hoping it'll fix itself, hmm...  I did clean up all the little bits and bobs that came with it though.  Some of the parts got fresh oil, but most just got a dunk in rubbing alcohol.

Okay, done! Have a productive time! :D

ETA: I'll be joining in Justine's Faithful April after an email encouragement haha!  I will stick to one project at a time, first the knit squares as they need done this month, preferably before Wednesday after next!  Then I will devote the rest of the time to FFIII and see how far that takes me. :D